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More nappy days on way for us all

SO now we have concrete evidence that, just like us mere mortals, the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge actually Do It, because – stand back in amazement – she’s pregnant.

But not for her the privacy of keeping schtum ordinary mums-to-be exercise “just in case” something goes wrong in the first 12 weeks.

Oh no. Her being admitted to hospital would undoubtedly have put the press in such a frenzy that the only way to assuage any speculation was to let the world know that yep, she’s having our baby.

For the cluster of cells that, all being well, will result in the birth of the third in line to the throne in around 30 weeks or so, really does belong to us. For royal biographer Robert Lacey has told us so.

“It’s a baby that we’re all having!” he trumpeted excitedly on BBC radio.

And boy – or girl come to that – don’t we know it. The nation has only been with child for a week but already it’s in a state of near hysteria. God knows what we’ll be like when the baby’s actually born.

It’s as if the Leveson inquiry never happened. The huge posse of media hanging around like haemorrhoids outside London’s King Edward VII hospital was redolent of them laying siege outside people’s homes who’ve had the misfortune to be thrust into the limelight through terrible tragedy.

Reporters have been filmed inside a baby shop for no other reason than it happens to be vaguely near RAF Valley, where William serves as a search and rescue pilot, so it stands to warped media reason that Kate might pop in there to buy the baby its buggy. As if…

An Oxford newspaper breathlessly reported that “congratulations came flooding in” after it was announced that the couple – who, having officially visited Oxfordshire once are fair game for excited “she’s actually been here before” style reporting – are expecting a royal heir. Well it’s hardly going to be a commoner is it? Talk about stating the bleedin' obvious.

Some wacky website has put together morphed images to come up with “likenesses of the potential child” based on photographs of the pair.

Apparently, if it’s a girl she’ll be fair-haired and look more like her dad than her mum with a recognisable likeness to her dead grandmother Diana.

If it’s a boy he will be dark-haired and look more like his mum. Crikey, it’s worse than who-does-he/she-take-after that you get in normal families and that’s bad enough, especially when they start making comparisons with the family black sheep. And there's plenty of them to go at with the Windsors….

But before then, once Kate’s on her feet again, there’ll be yards of drivel written about stuff she should and shouldn’t do while she’s pregnant. People will be on womb watch gimlet eyed for when she starts to “show.”

(“Look! There’s our baby!” will go up the cry as we switch on the bellyvision.) Maternity wear solutions will be offered in fashion pages (does my bump look big in this?) and high street fashion sweat shops will start churning out cheaper version look-a-likes of whatever she chooses to wear.

There'll be a fight to discover what pram the Cambridges buy and once it’s known, the happy manufacturer will bask in the reflected sales boost, as thousands of expectant families follow suit.

And as for the name, bets are already being taken on what it will be with speculation rife that Elizabeth will figure in there somewhere if it’s a girl and Charles if it’s a boy. Now there’s a surprise. Watch out for a raft of Lizzies and Charlies among the new-born population from next summer…

Then there’ll be all that guff about Kate getting her willowy figure back in record time with wise women shaking their heads about how she did it with apparent minimum effort and fuss. And there’ll be minute analysis about her breast-feeding too. God, the poor woman’s body isn’t her own.

I couldn't care less about any of this, I really couldn't, except to say that I wish them – as any other expectant family – well.

I really don’t want to know the ins and outs of her womb’s behaviour over the next seven months.

I’m truly not bothered whether it will be a boy or a girl or what it looks like. And I’m totally underwhelmed that this baby will be third in line to the throne because, let’s face it, I won’t be around to see it don the crown given the current royals’ propensity to living for an awfully long time.

Ipsoregulated

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